Read the book, Killing Ground: The battle for Sugar Loaf Hill.
The hill itself is now reduced to a stump behind a retaining wall surrounded by a big parking area. I walked the battlefield in 1968, and at the time there was still battle detritus to be picked up. I was in the 7th grade at the time.

The battle-areas were just as they had been left when the fighting ended. The civilian population on Okinawa had still not rebounded to the pre-battle level, so there was little encroachment. The vegetation had regrown, however, and combined with the terrain, made access to (and navigating through) most of the areas, fairly difficult and slow. But we had military maps of the entire area which had been put together by Army Intelligence after the battle, and these were highly detailed topo maps which also showed every road, trail, and streambed, every Japanese position of any kind, and the type of weapons that were situated there. We were therefore able to navigate to anywhere on the maps and to the scenes of the heaviest fighting. We were even able to locate the exact position in which Sgt Buford Anderson had won the Medal of Honor. On one occasion, while working, we were in a jeep on highway 5 in the flat area south of Nishibaru Ridge. I happened to have the maps with me, and saw there had been a Japanese 47mm antitank gun position about 50 yards from the road. Looking at the terrain and the topo map, I triangulated and told the driver where to pull over. We walked out into the tall grass, and sure enough, there was the position. The gun was gone, but the stacks of 47mm AP rounds were still in the gun pit, along with other Japanese equipment.

On another occasion, we found a Japanese 150mm field gun by accident. We were navigating on foot along a hillside, when we looked over at an adjacent hill and saw some 'unnatural' growth patterns of vegetation (you kind of develop a sense for that). We went down, and up the other hill. There was a short shelf of rock, and under the vegetation, some railway tracks that led about 20 feet to a tunnel. Sitting on the tracks at the rear of the tunnel, was the gun. A lot of direct fire had been poured into the tunnel, much of it.50 caliber, apparently from the slope we had just come from. The gun was in tatters, the muzzle was full of deep gouges and the length of the barrel was covered with bullet 'sideswipes'. the traverse and elevating controls had been sheared away, and the rack&pinion gears were shattered. When I opened the breech. the inside of the breech face itself was seen to have been impacted by numerous bullets. The rear wall of the tunnel behind the gun was thoroughly cratered out, with pockmarks in the pockmarks.

There was unexploded ordnance everywhere, both Japanese and American – grenades, mortar and artillery rounds, demolition charges (usually Japanese), etc. As fuse malfunctions are relatively uncommon, that attests to the huge volume of fire delivered by both sides during the battle. There were areas which had been shelled extremely heavily, to the point that shrapnel was so thick on the ground that the ground itself could not be seen. On the forward upper part of Love Hill, situated near Conical Hill, spent .30 caliber bullets constituted about 50% of the topsoil. This particular hill must have been saturated with machine gun fire day and night. On a ridge's razorback which extended down from Conical Hill, we found a stack of six or seven BAR magazines next to a large rock, apparently just as a BAR man had left them. That guy knew his weapon: every magazine still contained between one and three rounds.

The discovery of skeletal human remains was also very frequent, both in the open and in caves, tunnels, and pillboxes. From helmets, shoes, or the type of ammunition or equipment carried, all were Japanese. We considered these areas to be, effectively, gravesites, and we did not disturb them.

Often, positions which had been blasted shut during the battle had gradually opened up again by the settling of the collapsed material, which formed a crescent-shaped gap at the top, and we were able to access the interiors. Many of these were very sophisticated positions. We got into the Maeda Escarpment through our discovery of what appeared to be a vent shaft at the base of the backside, not far from a natural spire of rock structure at the East end. This shaft went down at about a 45-degree angle, and when I slid down it, I dropped out of the other end about four feet to the floor of a tunnel. This tunnel led to a main tunnel which had branch tunnels that exited at the face of the escarpment, and ramped tunnels which led to levels of gun positions both above and below it. Some tunnels were blocked by collapses. The top of the escarpment was a sheet of fissured lava rock, still covered with spent shrapnel. There was the anomaly of an 81mm mortar round still wedged into one of the cracks, tail sticking out, which had missed impacting on its fuse. One of the more interesting positions was a small tunnel that led in from the reverse slope of West Kakazu Ridge, which went up and to the right, getting smaller as it progressed. I was finally forced to do a low crawl, but I could see natural light coming from the right, and finally arrived at the light-source, a hole in the side of the ridge that was no more that about eight inches across. From this hole, most of the draw between Kakazu West and Kakazu Ridge proper, could be observed – and taken under fire. There were many other positions there, but this one would have been virtually undetectable. I unfolded my handkerchief and put it outside of the hole, and than went back out and around into the draw. There was my handkerchief, about halfway up Kakazu West, just below a small dark spot which was indistinguishable from dozens of other dark spots that were formed by natural rock shadows. That position was the result of much ingenuity and hard work, evidence of just how well-planned the defenses were.

In reading the details of the battle and then being able to find the places that were described, I became very glad that it was my lot to be there in the 1960's, and not in 1945. At times I felt actually small, being at a place where so many brave people, Americans, Japanese, and Okinawans too, had suffered so monstrously. I shouldn't admit it, but at one point I felt like becoming reverently conversant with some skeletal remains. What began as an interest in military history somewhere morphed into deep respect and regret. It was hallowed ground, profoundly.